Elena Turbina-Talberg

Elena Vasilievna Turbina-Talberg is one of the central characters in the novel "The White Guard" and the play "Days of the Turbins" written by him on the basis of Mikhail Bulgakov . In the novel, Elena is 24 years old, and in the play −23 years.

There are three heroines in the novel: Elena, Julia Reiss and Irina Nai-Tours. Remaining indifferent to the surrounding events, the White Guard heroines are busy with their personal novels, and in their author's description there is some neglect, they are characterized as cocottes .

Elena Turbina belongs to “domestic women” who do not have special interests outside the family; she is distinguished by a quiet and calm character. She is busy maintaining comfort in the Turbins' house. The novel begins with a scene of the expectation of her husband Talberg , who later turned out to leave her and leave for Warsaw to marry some of their mutual friend Lydochka Hertz. Elena (not knowing for sure that she is abandoned) allows her fan Shevinsky to take care of herself. An affair soon begins between them.

The question of the real prototype of Elena Turbina is the subject of discussion. Since the prototype of Talberg is Leonid Sergeyevich Karum - the husband of the sister of Mikhail Afanasevich Varvara , she is often considered the prototype of Elena. However, the historian Yaroslav Tinchenko , the author of the book “The White Guard of Mikhail Bulgakov” draws attention to the mismatch of characters in the generally quite frivolous and accessible Elena, with the character of Barbara, who was faithful to her husband and followed him in exile during the years of repression . Often, the prototype of Elena Turbina is considered the younger sister of Bulgakov - Elena (at least because of the coincidence of names) or all four of her sisters. Yaroslav Tinchenko, however, believes that Elena Turbina is more like Bulgakov’s mother Varvara Mikhailovna , who devoted herself only to her family.